Charismatic Leaders, Staff, and Subjects: An Interactionist Approach to the Rise of China’s Cultural Revolution

• In Event: 557 - Theory Section Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 02. Drawing on Weber

Abstract

Current theories of charisma have weak understandings of charismatic agency: they recognize the agency of leaders and administrative staff, but rarely that of those subject to charismatic authority. This weakness leads to problematic interpretations of important historical events. This paper, instead, constructs a tripartite interactionist model of charisma between leaders, staff, and subjects, which is germinal in Weber’s sociology of religion and first proposed by Bourdieu. Based on this model, it advances an alternative explanation of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, whose cause scholars have conventionally attributed to the bipartite conflict between Mao and the party administration. Confirming Bourdieu’s argument for charismatic subjects’ agency, I discover that students were initially acting on their own charismatic predispositions and initiatives, not blindly following Mao’s call, whose support came rather after the fact. I draw on primary historical materials and students’ self-accounts to trace the contingent interactive process between students, party officials, and Mao leading to the rise of Cultural Revolution activism. This model of structured agency and relations has implications for understanding the contingency and historicity of social change.

Author

• Xiaohong Xu, National University of Singapore